Dennis buys a mag built by students on the wonderful world of trivia
There's nothing succeeds like success. Felix Dennis takes on a new challenge : a magazine founded by American students that majors on trivia
Over the years, Mental Floss has built an audience of over 100,000 who devour the magazine - but also buy Mental Floss books, board games and T-shirts bearing slogans from readers like "Thomas Aquinas: The original deep fat friar."
Mr Dennis was imprisoned In 1971 as a co-editor of Oz magazine after the magazine published a School Kids edition including a sexually explicit drawing of Rupert the Bear.
Jim Anderson, Richard Neville - and Dennis - were arrested and accused of “Conspiracy to deprave and corrupt the morals of the Young of the Realm”. Dennis recorded a single with John Lennon to raise money for a legal defence fund.
The three were convicted of lesser offences and jailed but the convictions were later quashed to the relief of Neville, Dennis and Anderson (wearing rented schoolgirl outfits).
Dennis founded his own magazine publishing company in 1973, starting with the enormously successful Kung Fu monthly. The then small company broke into the US where others had failed.
He set up Personal Computer World and MacUser (both later sold) .In 2001, following a second life-threatening illness, Dennis took up poetry. Within a year, he wrote his first book of verse A Glass Half Full. Today he is one of the biggest selling poets of original verse..
Dennis remains the owner of Dennis Publishing, a privately owned company with headquarters in both London and New York City. It has over 50 magazine titles, digital magazines, websites and mobile sites in the UK including The Week, Monkey, Auto Express, PC Pro and Viz. Its flagship brand The Week is also published in the US and Australia.
In 1995, Dennis Publishing created Maxim, a title that became the world's biggest selling men's lifestyle magazine and global brand.
In 1996, Dennis acquired a stake in what is now the flagship brand The Week published in the UK, US and Australia and with a global circulation of over 700,000 .
In 2003 he bought IFG (I Feel Good) from Loaded founder James Brown. The titles Viz, and Bizarre were added to the Dennis publishing stable.
In 2006, Dennis wrote a best-seller on how he became a multi-millionaire in How to Get Rich - with a stark warning on the personal sacrifices: for Dennis, a crack cocaine addiction and admission to spending over $100 million dollars on drugs and women.
In June 2007, Dennis sold his US magazine operation which published the magazines Blender, Maxim and Stuff to Alpha Media Group.
In 2008, Dennis Publishing produced the digital magazines iGizmo and iMotor along with Monkey.
Today, Felix Dennis remains the owner of Dennis Publishing, still privately-owned, with headquarters in both London and New York . It has over 50 magazine titles, digital magazines, websites and mobile sites in the UK
Dennis declares he has a "passion for ink on paper". But now online he has the lads' mag Monkey, together with technology hub i-Gizmo and car website i-Motor.
There are limits to the power of online, however, he believes. Magazines with a strong visual element such as National Geographic or Vogue should stay in print, while information-based publications such as Time Out should do better online.
"Many magazines have already migrated online, like the fine Christian Science Monitor. Dozens more will have to do the same or fade away," he says.
If anyone can make Mental Floss sing in print, on paper- he can.